Brian is a long time game designer whose articles and game topics trend towards civil strife, counterinsurgency and revolution.
Caudillo is a semi-fictional card game designed to simulate power struggles among various factions in post-Chavez Venezuela. In this game, the composition of starting factions are random by nature as in the set up phase each player picks seven Group Cards.
Group Cards have different attributes such as business, criminal, government, media, military social and political. A player can start molding his or her faction's identity during the set up phase as the player has to discard three of the seven cards dealt.
Partial or full control of a group gives a player resources each turn. During the game a player can gradually change the nature of his faction by allocating more resources to group cards in play to gain full or partial control or withdraw support from a group (removing ID marker) and allocating that faction's efforts elsewhere.
On the next page I'll show some Group Cards along with my take on the control of these groups in today's Venezuela.
Group Cards
One of the three pages of Group Cards is copied below. The top three boxes on the cards contain numbers or a dash which represent the amount and type of resources generated by a group each turn.
The left box equals force and on this sheet these groups are not generating force such as the force factor of 3 for the 3rd Infantry Division and 2 for the People's National Police. The middle box lists Influence resources (i.e. ability to change events through personal networks, favors, propaganda, mass organizations, etc.) and the last is Money.
Modern Venezuela Group Control
Keep in mind that Brian didn't design the game to simulate a possible future state for Venezuela, he was only using it as the inspiration and framework upon with to build a game that (in his words) covers:"..............patterns of cooperation and conflict in a relative power vacuum... players compete and conflict to build usable and large power bases, but must also cooperate to deal with the social and economic crises that keep popping out of the deck".
My assumption is that the modern Venezuelan "game" is being played by 4 players and it has been modded from Caudillo's relative power vacuum into a scenario in which the Maduro Regime holds the President Card and also controls most of the group cards.
- The Maduro Regime
- The National Assembly
- The United States
- Maduro Allies (a mix of Cuba, Russia, China, Bolvia, etc.)
Another assumption is that the main action is being played out in other groups, especially the force generating groups such as the military. Currently, the National Assembly is spending most resources to take away Full Control of those groups from the Maduro Regime player.
My take on the Group Cards show above:
Maduro Regime: Full Control.
No other player contesting this group.
Mundovision:
National Assembly: Partial Control. Maduro Regime: Partial Control. US Player: Partial Control.
Only partial control by the National Assembly because of intimidation by the Maduro Regime. Also I'm guessing there is some US money and influence being allocated to this group.
Grupo Mendez:
Same as above but include Maduro Allies player as partial control.
Grupo Aquito:
Same as Gruop Mendez.
National Worker's Union:
Maduro Regime: Full Control.
National Assembly may be making a play here.
Worker's Federation of Virtusalia:
Same as National Worker's Union.
Federation of Chambers of Commerce:
National Assembly: Partial Control. US Player: Partial control (representing Venezuelan business leaders that have left Venezuela)
Virtualian Bishop's Conference:
Maduro Regime: Partial Control National Assembly: Partial Control.
US player may have some resources here.
Facebook:
Partial control by all players and heavily contested.
Next post I will discuss the next focus of game play which is Crisis Resolution.
Thanks for the writeup Scott, I appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteI first designed Caudillo in 2013, though it has had a couple of overhauls since then, and I am halfway through another major one that may or may not get done this year.
Of course the inspiration for the game's setting is a fictionalized post-Chavez Venezuela, though in 2013 Chavez wasn't "post" yet.
However, the game is not and was never meant to be a simulation of Venezuela itself, or the way things could actually go there...